Civil War

by digby

How many people around the country do you suppose are having converstions like this?

CALLER 1: — I really thought — I really, about six months ago or so, I started saying, “It’s unwinnable,” and I, you know, I just figure, well, maybe we ought to start pulling out, but you have to, right now, say, they’re doing this surge, I don’t know if it’s going to work or not, I’m not a military tech, you know, person —

GIBSON: [Caller], let me just tell you. This is the real deal: If this war is lost, it’s Iraqis who lost it. The one thing that drives me up the wall is saying, “Look at all the deaths you Americans have caused in Iraq.”

No! ‘Scuse me?

We invaded the place, we knocked over Saddam, and then Iraqis began killing each other. They didn’t go to the U.S. commander and say, “Pretty please, may I go kill some Sunnis?” “Your commandership, sir, may I go kill some Shia?”

No. They just went on a killing spree of their own and it’s not our fault. And the war is lost —

REID : This war is lost.

GIBSON: — are contemptible words. Contemptible. You got a new word? [phone number]. I need more words. Gibson on Fox.

[…]

GIBSON: [Caller] in Kentucky.

CALLER 2: Look, Harry Reid’s a buffoon, but I think you’re being a bit disingenuous —

GIBSON: All right.

CALLER 2: — when you say that we’re not responsible for the chaos in Iraq. I mean, who was it that disbanded their security forces and left that country in an unstable state?

GIBSON: Look, good point. The Bremer period is going to take the fall on the Iraq story — dismantling the Baathist organization, not letting anybody who was a Baathist run the electric system or the sewage system or the garbage pickup or any of that stuff. They’re going to take the hit on it. And the Bremer period where they disbanded the army, that’s going to take the hit on it — I guarantee you.

But, and that’s a mistake, I agree that was a mistake, but who is doing this killing? Give me a break. These are Iraqis killing each other. So what did we do? If you’re saying it’s our fault that we unmasked them as knuckle-dragging savages from the 10th century — fine! I’ll take credit. But thanks — but thanks for the observation, [Caller].

Meanwhile, from the April 25 edition of The Washington Times

Winston Churchill called him “one of the noblest Americans who ever lived,” and Theodore Roosevelt called him “the very greatest of all the great captains that the English-speaking peoples have brought forth.”

But has political correctness turned Robert E. Lee into a villain? That will be the question explored by six historians this weekend at a symposium commemorating the bicentennial of the Confederate commander’s birth.

“We were afraid that Lee would not receive the honors he should get because of the prevailing political correctness,” says Brag Bowling, a Richmond resident who helped organize Saturday’s event at the Key Bridge Marriott Hotel in Arlington.

[…]

Hostility to Confederate heritage “has really gotten bad in the last decade,” says Mr. Bowling, who says that political correctness in academia and in the press often leads to “dishonoring Confederate soldiers and ignoring the true reasons why the South wished to secede.”

I hate when that happens.

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